Depression Changes Structure Of The Brain Essay

An article “Depression changes structure of the brain, study suggests” conducted by the University of Edinburgh seeks to show that depression causes the structure of the brain to change. Depression is a common and serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act (American Psychiatric Association, 2017) and some symptoms include feeling sad over a period of time, loss of interest in previous activities, thoughts of suicide, etc. To conduct an experiment to show that depression changed the structure of the brain, over three thousand (3000) participants from across the United Kingdom were invited to take part in the experiment. Some of them were classed or labeled as “depressed” due to their medical history whilst the others were perfectly healthy and showed no signs of depression at all. These participants were required to undergo a new technique known as diffusion tensor imaging to map the structure of

“Researchers found alternations in the white matter of patients with depression and the quality of the white matter known as white matter integrity was reduced in people with depression, but not seen in healthy participants” and in the healthy participants, the amount of white matters was higher which tells us that they have better thinking and emotional skills and thus, the structure of their brain has not changed, unlike depressed patients. Patients who have low white matters have high emotional problems and are likely to suffer from Depressive schemas prompt dysfunctional, a disease which leads patient to think negatively about themselves (Psychology, 2014). In addition, the long-term exposure to increased cortisol levels which manages the body stress can slow the production of new neurons and cause the neurons in the hippocampus to shrink. The hippocampus is an essential structure for learning and memory and is structured in the temporal